Conventional communications networks, such as those for cellular telephones, utilize land based connections between a switch or mobile switching center (MSC), base stations (BSs), base station controllers (BSCs), and other network elements. Specifically, a signal or call processing element, is located in proximity to the physical traffic carrying and switching elements of the network, such elements being housed within the mobile switching center, and near corresponding cellular towers. Hence, when a call is placed, the call is routed through the call processing element and switch of a selected, albeit localized, geographic region based upon the signal reach of the cellular tower and corresponding communications zone defined thereby.
For applications over a relatively large geographic region, numerous cellular towers are usually needed to link the user, especially while a call is in progress, as he or she moves from one zone to another. The construction and maintenance of each tower site and the communications network used to interconnect multiple sites often involves considerable expense. While these arrangements have been found economically feasible for populated areas of most western nations, they are extraordinarily expensive for other nations, particularly those with relatively low population densities and/or vast remote, unpopulated, geographic regions. As a result, most of the geographic expanse of land in the world (including many countries that fall within those regions) have remained underserved or unreachable by cellular telephone service. In turn, the affected regions and nations have been largely precluded from the benefits of the wireless, Internet and digital revolutions of the last decade.
Accordingly, an economical, practical solution is desired not only for reducing the capital expense of providing telephone service to existing customers, but also for improving and adding service in remote geographic regions.